Welcome Back to Gotham City

Friday, September 30, 2016

"I Was Color Deaf!"

Shelby and her lawyer are on the defense, claiming that Shelby experienced temporary deafness during
the encounter.

Oh, she claims she didn't hear Terence Crutcher begging for his life as he had his empty hands in the air because of the oncoming sirens? Uh...

She claims that due to this temporary disability, she
did not hear the sirens of approaching back-up, nor did she hear the
approach of a fellow officer who would later deploy his Taser on
Crutcher.

Uh huh... Well, surely her color... deafness defense will hold up in court and she won't need another defense strat... Oh Jesus fucking Christ on a foam rubber crutch...

And if that excuse doesn’t work well enough, Shelby’s lawyer has another
defense: she really, really thought he had a gun! And if someone has a
gun, you get to kill them, apparently.

So, Betty Shelby is using as a defense seeing things and going deaf at crucial times. Yeah, exactly the kind of person to whom I'd want to give a gun and sweeping law enforcement authority.
And, really, folks, how many of us can imagine this cockamamie defense actually gaining traction? We've seen grand juries excuse cops for murdering unarmed black males in the cases of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and Eric Garner countless times. And that's when grand juries are actually convened.
We also live in a nation in which OJ, Robert Blake and Klaus Von Bulow weren't convicted for killing or trying to kill their wives, where Affluenza works as a defense even after four people are killed and a rapist is sprung after just three months in prison. But, Hey! what's to worry about! We have the best criminal justice system money can buy, right?

And Now, a Word From Herr Friedrich Drumpf:

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Why Hillary Clinton Didn't Win the First Debate

My faithful reader CC sent me a link to a Yahoo political article that he called "a dumb analysis" of Monday night's debate. It was entitled, "Why Clinton Hasn't Put Trump Away". And in my defense of the article, I told my dear friend, who tends to see things the same way I do, that I thought it wasn't dumb at all and that it was pretty perspicacious. This was one time we'd respectfully have to agree to disagree.
CC often acts as not only my Greek chorus but also my political muse of sorts and sometimes my responses to him are so in-depth and perceptive in their own right, I feel it incumbent to expand, clarify and share them with you. So here are some insights that even the incomparable Mike Flannigan in his worthy analysis didn't bother making:
First off, Clinton didn't win the debate, certainly not by any clear margin, simply because she chose not to go after Trump. And the same has to go for Trump. Why? Pre-debate collusion, plain and simple. Police, Special Forces operators and anyone going into a combat situation all have to have clearly-defined ROE (Rules of Engagement). And this goes for politicians who decide in some absurd Marquis de Queensbury rules what's permissible and what's off-limits. These same rules or something very similar to them apply to politicians who have pre-scripted questions given to them in advance of pressers and guests of talk shows who do pre-interviews with the hosts to ensure the exchange goes smoothly at air time. So it's not much of a stretch to say there was some serious negotiating going on between Camps Clinton and Trump well shy of air time.

Secondly, we'll likely never know why, exactly, Trump is running for President and feeding his Jovian-sized ego and a hunger of power falls far short of explaining his motives. We all know Clinton is a power-starved psychopath who honestly thinks the Presidency is her due, some heirloom that we owe her. Yet this also seems at stark odds with why she decided to put on the kid gloves when dealing with the man whose wedding she'd gone to not that long ago.

For instance, she could've hit Trump hard enough on a whole host of issues to guarantee he'd lose the debate to all but the knuckle-dragging dead-enders who proudly wear Trump's bad red hat, who bet on WWE matches and calls Black Lives Matter a terrorist group. For instance:

Clinton had a couple of Gotcha moments, such as when she got Trump to
admit to being "smart" for not paying his taxes and to boasting
he capitalized and exploited the housing crash, calling it, "business."
But she still pulled her punches and, for the most part, that was so
incredibly by design.

Clinton is a born infighter. This is someone who
smeared a 12 year-old child to win a rape case. This is someone who
smeared many women who'd accused her husband of raping or making sexual
advances toward them. This was someone who busted her hump using every
single, dirty fucking trick from the GOP playbook to illegally hamstring
the Sanders campaign.

I've long suspected Meryl Streep based her character in The Manchurian Candidate of a ball-cutting US Senator on Hillary Clinton. She was so vicious and so calculating, she twisted enough dicks at the convention to get the Democrats to throw under the bus a safe, bland mainstream running mate (Not very dissimilar to Tim Kaine, who looks like Hollywood's version of a what a VP should look and sound like) to get her son on the underside of the ticket.

Make no mistake about it. Clinton is a knife and piano wire artist. And if she'd hit Trump as hard as she knee-capped Bernie Sanders, she would've been practically inaugurated Monday night.
She
could've put him away by harping on his misogyny, corporate predation,
tax dodging, all sorts of things. But that was never her aim nor was it
Trump's. Otherwise, why didn't he harp on her Foundation woes, the
nightmare the Clintons imposed on Haiti, why didn't he hammer away at
her still-unfolding email scandal? This was arranged behind the scenes,
as it always is.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Are You Not Entertained?

Last night's debate/debacle felt a bit like watching Al Capone duking it out with Dutch Schultz. On Twitter and elsewhere, both candidates were caught in real time in the snares of fact checkers, the most chief of them being Jill Stein. And, as is the case with all debates, the one who tells his or her lies the most smoothly and with the most plausible deniability usually has their hand raised by someone in the equally disingenuous MSM. Also, as per the presidential debates' antecedents, the only truth we heard from either candidate was when one was attacking the other. Thanks to the professional trolls of opposition research, only then do they get their facts straight.

It started out civilly enough, that moment when each gladiator crossed their gladius across their chest and bowed their head to one another. But in last night's contest, there was no Russell Crowe as General Maximus Decimus Meridius to save the Republic at its end. Instead, all we saw were two wouldbe Commoduses.

Then Donald Trump's famously thin tangerine skin began to visibly rupture when Hillary Clinton tried to make some point or another. Eventually, Beelezebub's face began peeking out of Trump's human suit like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and saying, "Heeeeeeeeere's Donnie!"

Indeed, in the "pre-game" bloviating, as it was called by a blonde airhead, one of the topics of conversation basically came down to, "Can Donald Trump hide his douchebaggery for 90 minutes?" That alone should have set off klaxxon alarms to those even teasing the idea of voting for the tax-dodging oligarch. And, about 10 minutes into the debate, we got our answer and it was the final line of the parable of the Scorpion and the Frog- Donald Trump, sniffing back the same booger for an hour and a half (To show how much we've lowered the bar, it has to be said at least he didn't eat it like Ted Cruz, so I guess he gets points for that), showed he just had to act out his nature.

Secretary Clinton clearly won in poise, etiquette and being able to stand on her own two feet for an hour and a half without toppling over like the Leaning Tower of Pisa in an earthquake. But in the truth department, she was as woefully deficient as Trump.

The (True) Tale of the Tape

Tape can be taken out of context, especially when context is lacking (Jimmy O'Keefe can give a college course about that), but in itself it never lies, although Donald Trump last night told us otherwise. Setting up one of the biggest whoppers of the night was the sight of Warhawk Hillary Clinton, who voted to go to war with Iraq, insisting Donald Trump was all in for it, too. Clinton dissembled with the usual bullshit, insisting that as far as she knew, the pre-war intelligence was correct and that Donald Trump stated he supported the illegal invasion and occupation.

This we know to be true, unless you've forgotten all about the exhumed Howard Stern interview in 2002. But it was difficult to discern whether Hillary was trying to pin down Trump on one of his countless lies or for being for a war that Clinton still defends and now views as "a business opportunity." If the latter, it was the ultimate irony of the night.
After the debate and the usual victory lap, Trump vowed to hit Clinton even harder. While that may involve some schadenfreude for those of us who aren't Clinton fans, it also shows that Trump isn't very interested in talking about the issues themselves or policy, where, to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, the former Secretary of State excels.

And while they looked as if they were throwing haymakers at each other, as the press insists happens, the give and take was nothing more than vigorous shadow-boxing. Don't forget, not too long ago the Clintons went to Trump's latest wedding and if you don't think there's collusion and pre-agreements going on before these debates, then perhaps you think the WWE storylines are real, too.
For instance, Clinton could've hit Trump with the little-reported fact that he's been charged in a lawsuit for sexually molesting a 13 year-old girl in a New York court but she didn't. Would it have been a personal attack on Trump that Clinton shied from making? Perhaps. But who wants a pedophile as President of the United States? And after the Bernie Sanders political hit job, I think it can be said forbearance in the political arena is not among Clinton's most endearing character traits.
On the other side, despite his boorish interruptions of Clinton and hapless, helpless moderator Lester Holt, Trump could've hit below the belt by harping more than he did about Clinton's vote to go to war with Iraq based on cherry-picked and fabricated intelligence. He could've hit her on the Clinton Foundation's long-established history of pay-to-play with foreign dictators anxious to secure weapons deals (although Trump has got Foundation woes of his own, which Clinton, to show what a class act she is, didn't even mention).
Most forgivably, he could've but didn't hit Clinton with the fact that, as in the 90's, several people, including at least four from this summer, critical of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee are now sleepin' wit' da fishies.
He could have hit her hard on her own corporate and legal past (and present), such as when she was a 27 year-old lawyer trying her first case, a rape case, and emerged victorious... by smearing the 12 year-old victim who was so severely injured by the attack she could never bear children (would it have been too much to expect Trump to rhetorically ask her if she'd defend him in his own impending child rape case? Yyyyeeeeaaaah, probably). Clinton reportedly laughed about it, afterwards, just as she had laughed over the murder and anal-raping-by-knife of Col. Gaddafi.
Alas, we heard little to none of this, as much as we would've loved even more to hear a substantive policy debate, at which Secretary Clinton is a past master.

The Sound of Carefully Agreed-Upon Silence

Here's what else we didn't hear:

Substantive talk about women's rights, save for a brief sound bite in which Clinton called for equal pay for women.

Climate change. Global warming. Substantive debate about how to curb police brutality especially among the African American community.

Instead, what we heard from Trump was a bunch of nothing about all those things, save for him downplaying his 70's DOJ lawsuit in which he and his building managers enforced a no blacks policy. Clinton, revealing herself to be yet another old, rich, out of touch white person, said racial bias from law enforcement is inherently felt by all races. Such a fallacious claim is so patently absurd (especially after the completely unwarranted shooting deaths on back to back days of Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott) I'd honestly be amazed if a single black person voted for Clinton this November 8th.

Of course, the three topics discussed by the candidates was already agreed upon behind the scenes. Perhaps these issues will be brought up at the final two debates but one doubts it.

And, save for Trump rightly calling Clinton on her flip-flopping on the TPP, nothing substantive was discussed about that ruinous "trade" deal that's been described as "NAFTA on steroids." Not a word was mentioned of the ongoing struggle of the Lakota Sioux against the Dakota pipeline.

And all this time, with Trump's constant interruptions and Lester Holt's near-complete refusal to challenge these candidates on their constant lies (By 10 o'clock, Holt had Trump's footprints on his back.), only one person was keeping them honest: Dr. Jill Stein from her lonely rafter on Twitter.
For whatever good it did her from her hidey hole on Twitter and the sound stage on Democracy Now, Dr. Stein addressed many of the things the two buffoons on the stage couldn't or wouldn't touch: Student loan debt, the so-called War on Drugs, nuclear disarmament, etc.
Point, set and match. Check and checkmate.
Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon squared off in their debate exactly 56 years ago yesterday to the day. There was an article that came out the night before the debate by Emmet John Hughes in which he wrote,

If [television] drives politics toward theatrics, so that the number of
politicians who imagine themselves entertainers swells to match the
number of entertainers who imagine themselves politicians; if it
ruthlessly practises a kind of intellectual payola that rewards the man
who can reduce the most complex issue to the silliest simplification...

The rest of that sentence was completed in the persons of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Dr. Jill Stein was right when she simply said, "We deserve better."

Monday, September 26, 2016

Deplorable Ted: The Aftertaste

I can only imagine what happened backstage after Ted Cruz searched what passes for his conscience (more like oleaginous political, partisan calculation) and endorsed Trump after refusing to do so last July on the basis that, "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father." Until he does. Poor wingnut- he'll probably still be brushing his teeth and tongue until one arm or both fall off.
Although why Trump would seek the endorsement of a guy who was almost ridden out of Cleveland on a rail is beyond me. But it's obvious that as we approach the endgame, Trump is busily courting all the various types of right wing nuttery whether it be the KKK, ammosexual, I Don't Wanna Pay My Taxes, Evangelical Nut Bag or the Teabagger votes. But he's draining them all into the Great Trump Societal Drain and Ted Cruz, whatever he represents, just became the latest greasy hair ball in the Trump Trap.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

56 Years Ago, He Saw Him Coming.

"If [television] drives politics toward theatrics, so that the number of
politicians who imagine themselves entertainers swells to match the
number of entertainers who imagine themselves politicians; if it
ruthlessly practises a kind of intellectual payola that rewards the man
who can reduce the most complex issue to the silliest simplification; if
it effectively invites a whole people to foreswear the labor of reading
for the ease of gaping ... If the pungent slogan asserts such
sovereignty that disarmament is discussed on the level of deodorants; if
all impulses conspire to glut the channels with what sells rather than
with what matters; if, by all these lapses and deceits, a whole people
lets itself become mentally trapped in a suffocating kind of isolation
booth from which no sound can be heard but the voice of the huckster—the
answer will be no." - Emmet John Hughes, The NY Times, September 25, 1960

Saturday, September 24, 2016

This is Your Brain on Religion

Like Michael Corleone, just when I try to go legitimate and just when I think I'm out, some assholes drag me back in.
Now, before you reflexively begin leveling the usual accusations of my being obsessed with The Chadwicks (sounds like a reality TV show on the Sons of the Soil Channel, doesn't it?), I have to post a disclaimer here that this wound up in my inbox early this morning courtesy of a random reader who no doubt knows of my trials and tribulations with these lunatics. The email I post below was proferred to me, unsolicited, because she got it into her Jebus-crazed head that I was the secret author of some comment or email that my cameo correspondent had sent.
I don't know the content or context of the communique except to say it must have been written in a spirit of jest. All I can say is that I have better things to do with my time like finishing an old novel that I'd started years ago and keeping the gas and lights on and the pot boiling. But this is what was forwarded to me by someone who appears to be a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan:

Dear Robert,

Dave asked me to respond
to this. We talked about it and decided that there's only two things
that could possibly be happening here. The first, and most likely, is
that this is a fake account that you are using to "go undercover" to
"get dirt on Chadwick" like you did when Duncan Browning, (and for the record, what happened to him after we left was just awful so we have forgiven him for betraying us), gave you his phone number and you called us and did that
ridiculous acting job when we were trying to enjoy our "After Church"
time on a beautiful Sabbath afternoon. If this is the case, then it's
every bit as pathetic as that, because nobody would ever send an email
this flipping retarded except you.

The second case is that
you have recruited some woman to send this for you, but you obviously
wrote this, Robert. To the young (or old) lady, we don't hold this
against you. We know you can't possibly be this stupid and we know you
didn't write it. It has the stink of Robert Crawford all over it. But if
you would be so kind to pass this message along to him, that would be
great.

Robert, I want you to know that Dave is MINE! He
belongs TO ME! You cannot have him! I know you want him, but as he has
told you countless times before, no means no. Your attempts to flirt
with him like this used to be cute, now it's just annoying. I own him
and I'm not letting you have him. Besides, don't you have a wife or
girlfriend or something? How about trying to bang her instead of trying
to steal MY man!

God Bless You
- Fiona Chadwick

I should just stop right here and silently shake my head but there's just so much that is criminally wrong with this email that I don't know where to start.
First off, I, again, don't know what started this and secondly, I haven't any idea who called them or when on their glorious Magic Underwear Sabbath Day. But she seems to take an almost admirably proprietary "ownership" in "Dave" and I guess we're supposed to just ignore the fact that she nearly broke her neck getting from Cruz campaign HQ in Idaho to be with her long-lost love at the exact same moment that news broke about the six figure publishing contract that "Dave" still hasn't gotten around to telling his alleged readership about while he's busy begging money from them on Patreon.
Thirdly, the concept of "owning" a husband is kind of reminiscent of Fiona's and "Dave's" Mormon forebears back when they owned slaves. Ownership, in my mind, is something you claim.when you're afraid you won't be able to otherwise retain it. Which, with Becky Lynch never far from what passes for "Dave's" thoughts is always a distinct possibility.
Fourthly, the idea that I've been flirting with someone I've hated for nigh unto these last two plus years with an unholy passion buries the outrage meter and starts a new one that charts laughter. If I've been pursuing him from all the way in central MA, then I have to say the obsession and attraction was, to say the least, mutual:

These are random screengrabs of just two day's worth of activity I got from his IP Address when he was still living in Utah on April 1st and 15th, respectively (and neither day shows the full extent of his "interest" in this forum. April 1st alone saw 600-700 hits from his IP address). If he can produce a similar photoset of activity from my IP address, then I'll own up to an unnatural attraction to "Dave's" masculine charms. But he won't and can't.
This is what religion, paranoia and a healthy dose of right wing nuttery will do to your brain, people. Like the rage zombies in Danny Boyle's 28 series, paranoia will make you swat at nonexistent flies or at the wrong people. But to be honest with y'all, I could sooner envision a threesome with Trump, Cruz and Jeb! Bush than my having even the slightest interest in "Dave" Chadwick's lawsuit-riddled "career" let alone his person.
But, hey, Fiona, if you think you can make him a church-going Christian and help him get over his ongoing obsession with WWE wrestler Becky Lynch, more power to you, girl. Try dying your hair carrot red. Maybe that'll ease him him in his painful transition from Becky to you. Try learning some basic wrestling moves like a half Nelson, if he's so inclined in bed during your tenderer moments. An Irish brogue couldn't hurt, either. (Irish foreplay: "Brace yerself, Joe, me bucko!")
And I will admit to a middling bit of interest in his career path from time to time, especially little gems such as this that I receive from a regular reader that restores my faith that, sometimes in life, the most evil of us get a fat stake driven right through their black, fucking little hearts.
Fuck you and your Kolob Marvel comics God, Fiona Chadwick. If He really existed, people like you and "Dave" wouldn't exist.

Addendum: This is my stalker's version of humor and parody. Reading this, you won't be surprised why his books don't sell, why people on Reddit thought that his Microsoft Paint comics are as funny as AIDS on Fire Island and why he's gotten a whopping $69 after over a month of begging on Patreon for money. This also comes with a dedicated Twitter account (that has since been taken down courtesy of yours truly and his loyal Twitter followers), which required setting up a dedicated email address and harvesting old avatar .jpegs I'm no longer using in his pathetic attempt to be humorous. You'd think with a new book contract, a new wife and a whole new life (which includes a gig on Fandom), he'd be too busy for this puerile bullshit.

But this is Jailbird Joseph David Chadwick we're talking about, a walking DSM V and the most obsessive, pathetic stalker in the history of the internet.

"Bring in That Floating Fat Man."

...because what, after all, is the Trump family but Dune's House Harkonnen minus the popping zits?
What you'll never hear from the media that breathlessly reports who's dropping and who's rising in the polls is that, despite all the hundreds of millions of Daddy Warbucks being spent, all the thousands of hours of attack ads, every news cycle being consumed with tremendous trifles about the campaigns is that at least 60-65% of the electorate won't turn out to vote for this general election cycle. Meaning we're, once again, given the choice of Coke or Pepsi, Crest or Colgate, Kang or Kodos or, likeliest scenario, arsenic or cyanide.
In other words, we're saddled with two of the most massively unpopular presidential candidates in all of history. One is under constant investigation by the FBI (if you stretch your definition of "investigation" to include something by the Three Stooges) and the other is being sued for sexually molesting a 13 year-old child.
Forget about the prequel of Idiocracy: I think this is the sequel. By this time in 2020, we'll lose the formula to manufacture ice.

Friday, September 23, 2016

The Evidence Farm

North Carolina is famous for its agriculture, growing staples of American life such as tobacco, cotton and produce. But North Carolina's number one crop, for which there is no particular season to plant, is manufactured evidence.
Yes, that's right. Your intrepid one had actually caught North Carolina police officers planting evidence next to Keith L. Scott's dead body not once but twice, within 10 seconds of each other. Don't listen to the racist assholes out there who claim the second object was just a glove or that the brave white cops were merely protecting and helpfully moving along a gun that was really, actually owned by Keith Scott...
Which is contrary to everything we've come to expect from crime scene investigatory protocols.

Hell, you don't even have to listen to me. But if you have a sharp eye, you too will see what I saw. And if your mouse finger is nimble and quick enough, it'll catch what I had in these screengrabs. At precisely two minutes in, the phone pans to the left, then you can plainly see something drop down the left leg of the black cop (presumably the one who'd just shot Scott). After it lands, anyone who knows anything about guns (and I've forgotten more about firearms than most anyone will likely learn) can plainly see the unmistakable shape of a semi-auto handgun, grip and barrel.

The caption in the second image says it all. Two cops drop foreign objects within 10 seconds of each other and nobody at the crime scene seems to notice anything unusual, perhaps because this is business as usual.This is eerily similar to Michael Slager's planting of evidence (his taser he later claimed Scott had tried to grab) after he shot Walter Scott in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina last year. This is why planted evidence even has its own name, its own nomenclature: "throwdown."
And this is precisely what we're seeing here in Mr. Scott's widow's cell phone video, twice, within 10 seconds, by two cops, at an active crime scene, to the complete bemusement of everyone present.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the Charlotte PD Chief will not allow the dashcam video to be presented as evidence. Because it would show in more vivid detail the items being dropped at the crime scene by two of his subordinates seconds after a fatal shooting of an unarmed man.

Twenty Bucks, Same as in Town

Blogwhoring. You do it, I do it, we all do it. What have you been up to, lately?
Regarding the newest racist/racial execution of a black man, we start with that of Keith L. Scott in Charleston, North Carolina. John Cole at Balloon Juice shows two videos shot by two different people, including the late Mr. Scott's widow.
At 2:14 in, you can plainly see the cop in the red shirt planting evidence, specifically a gun or what’s known in police parlance as a “throwdown.” And the
brazen cocksucker even knew the man’s wife was filming him.
And that’s why the police chief just as brazenly refuses to
release the dashcam video, because it’s of the cruiser on the left
pointed right at that cop literally planting evidence.
"Sure, Cheryl, you can sit in on Hillary's statements to us as part of her legal counsel, even though you walked out on an interview with us and sandbagged our investigation into the emails. Oh, can we get you anything? Tea, coffee, partial immunity?"Politico is about the closest I can find to an actual non-right wing blog that's actually had the balls to write about that damning 16th page of the FBI's 47 page report of Clinton's endless omissions given last summer. That's because all the left wing blogs (including Digby at Hullabaloo) are coughing and harumphing in their sleeves over this newest scandal. Basically, all the big "progressive" blogs have been in the tank for Clinton for over a year and, in my estimation, are utterly and completely worthless in covering all the news about the Clinton campaign.
Desperate Donald Trump on Ted Cruz' endorsement:

July: "I won't accept it."

Today: "I am greatly honored."

"P.S. Don't touch me."

Luckily, Jennifer Rubin at the WaPo knows what we should think about anything or anyone, at any time.
Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors caught this gem from Mike Pence who believes we should be talking all about the Baby Jebus and less about white cops gunning down unarmed black folks because that's so much more divisive than, you know, white cops gunning down unarmed black folks that tend to lead to riots. Yes, Tengrain, Mike Pence is an assrocket. Yes, he is.The Rude Pundit has Five Questions for Trump deplorables who are still screaming about Hillary's tax returns. They're good questions, sure, ones that are designed to trip up these basket of deplorable cases on their hypocrisy. However, what the Rude One can't seem to reconcile is that it's not OK for Clinton to do something that the Donald also refuses to do. But then again, Lee Papa, like all other liberal bloggers save for yours truly, has succumbed to the politics of fear and is willing to let a furtive old crook like Clinton in the White House to keep another furtive old crook like Trump out of the White House. Which makes perfect sense, when you don't think about it...D r i f t g l a s s resurrects the ghosts of blogger godfathers Steve Gilliard and Hunter S. Thompson in posts they wrote just before their untimely deaths. And the two word message is, essentially, "Fuck them." Meaning Conservatives.
And in the august and esteemed virtual pages of this blog, I say the same to Hillary Clinton voters, because they are absolutely the new, unacknowledged right wing, using the same tactics, the same dirty tricks and the same intellectual gymnastics to excuse every crooked fucking thing Hillary ever did and will surely do in the White House. The so-called Democrats learned well as the cloven hooves of the neocons. And if you tell me you ever voted for Hillary Clinton, I will gladly spit in your face.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

"Hands Up and I'll Shoot!"

There are so many things that are wrong with the Terence Crutcher shooting in Tulsa on September 16th. And yet, even places like CommonDreams claim the video evidence, from two dramatically different angles, is "inconclusive." The CommonDreams article even elevates the ridiculous precedent of Graham v. Connor and its justification of "objective reasonableness" to a legitimate reason to shoot unarmed black men in the street like something out of a Judge Dredd graphic novel.
Yet we do not live in a dystopian Judge Dredd universe in which officers are allowed to act as judges, juries and executioners.
Yet we do, with so little accountability that it's essentially open season on all black males.
Here are the facts as seen in just the dashcam video or the helicopter video:
Crutcher's SUV broke down in the middle of the road. We don't know if he called the authorities for assistance (typically, one wouldn't call the police in that situation). We also don't know who, exactly, called the police on Crutcher.
It's disgusting enough that Crutcher felt the need to put his hands up when the police, for some reason, arrived in full force, but put them up he did.
He was then tased after he walked back to his vehicle, which is intended to be a non-lethal way of incapacitating an aggressive, unstable or belligerent suspect so s/he is no longer a danger. Yet seconds after he was tased, he was shot by Officer Betty Shelby for no accountable reason. One possible "reason" would be Crutcher's sudden movement in collapsing when he was unaccountably tased.
Crutcher appeared to have his hands down when he was shot. Yet since we cannot ascertain from either video (especially the chopper version) the exact moment he was fatally shot, he could've lowered his arms when Shelby opened fire on him.
The officers involved claimed Crutcher was reaching into his vehicle just before he was killed. Yet if that was a concern for the officers, they should have cleared the vehicle first before allowing Crutcher to walk towards it. Apparently, they did not give him verbal commands to that end, almost as if they were setting him up for a public execution. Perhaps he made the mistake of reaching for his registration, such as Philando Castile in Baton Rouge.
Crutcher had a firearm neither on his person nor in his vehicle, a fact that would've been readily ascertained had they searched his person and vehicle. Keep in mind, he was not a suspect in a robbery, murder, assault or any violent crime.
An officer can be plainly seen walking back toward the dashcam very unsteadily while being supported by two other officers. At first, I thought after watching the dashcam video and its forced perspective, that he had his hands on Crutcher when another tased him. Yet this is not the case. The helicopter video plainly shows the four officers closest to Crutcher were no less than 18 feet from him. So what accounts for the officer's woozy state? Seeing a man get shot before his eyes? The sight of Crutcher's blood pouring from his torso?
The Chief of the Tulsa PD, to his credit, did not even try to spin, whitewash or otherwise dispute the facts. He made no attempt to defend Shelby. In fact, the Chief even called the Department of Justice and actually requested their involvement in the form of a civil rights investigation, which is just now beginning.
We may never know why Betty Shelby felt the need to gun down an obviously unarmed and compliant black man as if he was a rabid dog by the side of the road. We may never know who actually called the police on Mr. Crutcher. We may never know why the Tulsa police decided to render aid to one of their own (who was seemingly uninjured) seconds after the shooting and why they waited nearly three minutes before making the first attempts at first aid on Crutcher.
Those facts are inconclusive and CommonDreams in their armchair bloviation about Constitutional law never mentions any of these things.
What we do know is this:
Yet another compliant, unarmed African American man was shot in public and literally within seconds of the unjustified arrival of law enforcement (as in the case of Tamir Rice). White people, all them being Trump supporters with "deplorable" in their handles, reflexively look for any possible explanation to justify this man's murder.
Since then, another unarmed black man has been shot and killed by a black officer (Keith Scott was sitting in his car peacefully reading a book as he awaited his son from school), this one in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because #whitepropertymatters, Gov. Pat McCrory had declared Charlotte a state of emergency and called out the National Guard.
What police need to learn, and what they never will pending a complete overhaul of police culture, is that if they get to hold public executions in the street, then the public gets to hold funerals in those same streets.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

A Study in Contrast

About a year and a half ago, I was driving back from TF Green Airport in Warwick-Providence, Rhode Island. I was about three-four miles from the airport when I heard a horrible sound. Something was dragging behind me and I eventually realized when I heard the rumble that my muffler had fallen off and was dragging on the asphalt. As I was doing 65-70 on I-95, I couldn't very well stop and I hoped to make it back to my town so I could safely rectify the problem.
But when I was about three exits from my turnoff, I got pulled over by the Massachusetts State Police. The cop was a diminutive African American fellow who looked startlingly like one of my readers who used to be a MA statie. He'd advised me that several people had called in complaints about me and my muffler. When I told him why I couldn't stop, he insisted, rightly, that I had to get the muffler off any way I could.
He was nice enough about it and watched and stood guard over me as I got on my back in the breakdown lane and tried pulling off the muffler. I couldn't do it. It was stuck on the rubber bushing and I couldn't pull it off by hand. When I told the statie this, he then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out and opened the sharpest knife I'd ever felt outside of a Ka-Bar. He then handed it to me handle first and told me to try that.
I was able to cut the bushing within seconds and I then took the rebellious muffler and threw it in my back seat. That black policeman had no idea what I was going to do with that razor-sharp knife but he trusted me with it, anyway. And, naturally, I used it for its intended purpose and gave it back to him. Then we shook hands and parted ways.
Contrast this with what happened to Terence Crutcher in Tulsa last Friday. Discuss.

The lead picture is of my two sons (the ones at either end of their late mother.). I have two handsome, intelligent, biracial boys and it breaks my heart I have to teach them how to deal with white cops because, while they're half white, they both look totally African American. Every day of my life, I'm put in the horrifying position of worrying over which one of them will wind up as a hashtag on Twitter that'll drop into oblivion in a few hours.

What if We Held a Parade & Nobody Came?

That's right. There was a bomb that went off on 27th Street in Chelsea last night and, as always when this sort of thing happens in an election year, presidential candidates jump (Or, in Hillary Clinton's case, fall) on the headline. It was a ball bearing-impregnated pressure cooker bomb (Apparently not very dissimilar to the Boston Marathon bombs) and another, thankfully, was defused by the NYPD Bomb Squad. Of course, Trump wasted no time in blaming the bombing on terrorism (Read: Muslims) while Hillary Clinton was caught talking in her sleep and saying we needed to get all the facts before making any judgments. Mayor Bill DeBlasio said while the bomb was deliberate, he didn't think it was tied to terrorism. Thanks to Trump, though, every right wing asshole who thinks they're original by putting "Deplorable" in their name has been trolling the #ChelseaNYC hashtag ("Chelsea?! Hey, isn't that the name of the Clintons' only child?! Hmmm. I'm going to Alex Jones with that!") and using the 29 injuries of New York City residents to spew verbal diarrhea all over Muslims and liberals, somehow tying this to the Syrian refugee crisis. They tend to have 0-3 followers.
Meanwhile, 4 hours away in Hudson, MA, we were startled by the sirens of virtually every emergency vehicle in town, something we've never done before. Because, I guess the only thing that can get Americans to sit up and pay attention is either the sound of bombs or sirens going off. And after the fire trucks, police cars, fire rescue vans and EMS ambulances blew their wad, this is what followed for no less than a half hour.

Worst. Parade. Ever.
Just keep in mind, people, what happened last night in Chelsea (and, again, thank goodness there were no fatalities), was a dress rehearsal for another 9-11. And as far as I'm concerned, both candidates failed miserably. Trump was quick to blame Muslims and Hillary, while she has to be credited with waiting for the facts before rushing to judgment, looked as if she was roused out of bed to talk to the media.
A ball bearing bomb goes off near Hell's Kitchen, killing no one, and we lose our fucking minds. Just remember, peeps: Much deadlier car bombs have been going off in Baghdad and other Iraqi towns and cities on a near-daily basis for going on 14 years and they often get blown to bits.

Good Times at Pottersville, #25, Birtherism edition

Republicans like Donald Trump can resurrect the old specter of birtherism until the Mexicans go home. But one thing is indisputable: No matter what nation he hails from, when children are around the President, they don't act as if they've just seen the Bogey Man, a Killer Clown and Satan combined.

The Craziness Hits Close to Home

You'd think Trump's Massachusetts campaign headquarters would be in a major city like Boston, Springfield or Worcester, at least in an affluent Boston suburb town. No, they chose 45 Main St., Hudson, a crappy, dying little burg you'd usually have the sense to drive past, and quickly, considering there's not a whole helluva lot going on. In fact, it's precisely where you'd put a doomed campaign in a state that's already deeply in the tank for Crooked Hillary.
We're a town without jobs, without a legitimate industry since Intel shut down and the hi tech bubble burst years ago.

Since the high tech bubble burst, Hudson's chief vocations are now arson and rubber-necking

Still, Trump's state campaign chairman, Vince DeVito, is valiantly putting lipstick on this pig of a town by saying that Hudson is a refreshing change of pace from the bustle of Boston and that we have a "recent business renaissance" (which, in the wake of the hi tech bubble ka-boom, I guess is dogwhistlese for our 20+ year-old Wal-Mart that thoughtfully made room for Trump's campaign HQ by putting some Mom & Pop operation out of business). In other words, Hudson's the kind of hill you'd choose to die on when every other large town or city tells you you're persona non grata.
Still, Trump supporters here have a "can-do" attitude, with one town resident saying, "Massachusetts is probably a lost cause, unfortunately. I wish it weren't, but it probably is." I may pay a visit to Trump campaign HQ on Election Night when Trump loses the state by at least the 23 points he's projected to lose by. I'm sure there will be lots of wicked discouraged teabaggers staggering in their grief down Main St. to Chubby's packie and not for a tonic.
Oh, man, am I gonna have fun with this.
Just don't be surprised if I have to set up a legal defense fund later this fall...

Good Times at Pottersville, 9/16/16

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Apparently, Pimpin' is Easy

DCLeaks revealed one thing yesterday that you may not have known about Colin Powell: He's a regular guy.

Sure, maybe the former Secretary of State and four star general might not want to sit down and have a beer with you. But in his gossipy perceptions about the powerful elite with whom he'd once rubbed shoulders, he really brings himself down to earth like the rest of us.

How else does one explain his verbal brickbats in a series of emails to Bigly donor Jeffrey Leeds, who himself told Powell that "Nobody likes (Hillary)", said the 42nd president was "still dicking bimbos"? Or that Hillary Clinton was "greedy, not transformational"? Or that Donald Trump was "a national disgrace?" To a latter day reader, it's better than reading the diary of Samuel Pepys, the British 17th century naval official who in his diary had written scandalous but delightful pastiches on King Charles II and other luminaries in the second half of 17th century London.

But the man who'd also said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for President, “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris,” may sound typical of a man who'd served in what can charitably be called a "transformative" Republican administration. True, he also takes some pot shots at the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump and called the Cheneys "idiots.". But what the media ate up, understandably, were his scathing criticisms of his second successor. In fact, the vitriol of his remarks about the former Secretary of State seem to get more caustic in emails written as recently as a few weeks ago about the email/server controversy that continually dogs Clinton like bouts of pneumonia/dehydration/influenza.

The takeaway one inevitably is given is that the Clintons hate certain powerful men who happen to be black, they're horrible, greedy human beings and Bill is still lecherous. Between the DCLeaks hack and the simultaneous Wikileaks hack, the two large disclosures paint a portrait of a power couple not unlike the Underwoods in House of Cards, two scheming, manipulative, power-starved sociopaths, revealed as only a DC insider like Powell can articulate.

And between the Guccifer 2.0-affliated group and Julian Assange, we see an unflattering tableau of a sick, embittered old woman who blames one black man for her failures (even though Secretary Powell was careful to delineate the differences between his email set up and Clinton's) and another simply for defeating her fair and square in a highly-contested election.

And Colin Powell is not very happy with what he sees on either side of the political landscape.

“Dumb. She should have done a ‘Full Monty’ at the beginning.”

The media's insistence in focusing on his remarks on Clinton are understandable and has little if anything to do with the fact they're on opposite sides of the aisle. Clinton is, after all, Powell's second successor at Foggy Bottom and Clinton did make the tremendously bad error in judgment of blaming Powell and his so-called bad advice that she'd solicited at a Hamptons shindig for the 1% back in 2009. Whether or not he wanted to, despite his prohibitions to Clinton at that dinner, he is involved. Why shouldn't he get his money's worth?

Don't get me wrong- I have little sympathy much less empathy for Colin Powell. Colin Powell is a very ethically-challenged man who will have to live out the rest of his days knowing that, armed with nothing but cartoons and a tiny vial of fake anthrax, he lied to the UN Security Council in February 2003. In doing so, he fibbed us into a ruinous war that killed over a million people and let his reputation as a no-nonsense, pragmatic trustworthy public official get squandered by a pack of neocon war criminals.

But that doesn't mean Secretary Powell is still incapable of telling the truth about the elite in his circle and generation. What Mr. Powell said about the Clintons was nothing new. He merely crystallized and confirmed what we'd already suspected about the Clintons but couldn't quite bring ourselves to take on blind faith.

His correspondence with his friend and business partner Jeffrey Leeds pulls back the rest of the curtain, as do the latest Wikileaks disclosures: The Democratic Party, starting with the Clintons, is filled to the rafters with greedy, shiftless, sociopathic, lecherous rage monsters who would trample their grandmother's bones in their never-ending scramble for power. And to that end, the Democrats, led by latter dayTammany Hall sachems Bill and Hillary Clinton, are no better than the Republicans.

We can debate until the cows come home about the cyberethics of hacking into Secretary Powell's Gmail account. But that isn't the issue. The real issue is that our most reliable source of truth is coming from hackers in the shadows, the people we've been dreading and fearing since the internet was opened to the public in the early 90's. The issue is that if the mainstream media did their job, we wouldn't need people like the Guccifers, Julian Assange or Wikileaks.

Being once at the top tier of power of a presidential administration, Secretary Powell is certainly entitled to indulge in gossip, as are we all. Except in this case, with our own government more hostile than ever to transparency, despite its public declarations to the contrary, gossip is what has to inform us until our elected officials and the media that are supposed to be keeping their feet to the fire, come clean with us.

Instead, these spoon feedings to the stenographic MSM is what passes for scoops and actual news.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Google search phrase: What's a Firewall?

Maybe John McCain was on to something when he refused to stop using clay tablets. Because it seems Secretaries of State still haven't grasped the basic concept of email security, firewalls, encrypted emails and all that techie stuff. Because it seems the State Department, the Democratic National Committee, Colin Powell and Lord knows how many other government and former government entities still stubbornly insist on using clay pipes, or, if they're feeling especially Millennial and hip, maybe lead. Sure, the young'uns are using them there new fangled PVC water pipes but ours ain't never gonna spring a leak.
Right?
Via DCLeaks and the priceless Lee Fang of The Intercept comes this newest treasure trove of dirt on Hillary Clinton (And, speaking strictly as an aside, today would be a fabulous day for Donald Trump to release those tax returns and real medical records). And I have to say, if Crooked Hillary still gets to stagger into the White House after this, then it'll be the most vivid delineation of corruption in US politics since Watergate. Not that I want Trump going into the Oval Office instead of her. I'd rather butt fuck a rabid badger for an hour straight than see that.
But Hillary backers really ought to start giving Bernie a harder second squint. Jill Stein has zero chance of getting elected... except on the B side of a Bernie ticket. Consider: Bernie never gave up his delegates, never conceded or officially suspended his campaign and his name was still put in nomination at the Philly convention last July. He's still a viable candidate. And, unlike Clinton, he's actually helping the Lakota Sioux and their ongoing fight against the Dakota pipeline (even though he has nothing to gain by doing so).
And what I'm saying here isn't particularly shockingly or brilliantly insightful or original. It's just good common sense. Plus, while I pay little if any attention to polls this close to Election Day, the latest ones have Hillary actually behind Trump in battleground states and those were conducted weeks before this new disclosure this morning.
Among the most devastating DCLeaks/Intercept disclosures of Colin Powell's hacked emails:

Hillary not only blamed one black man for her email woes (even though it was like comparing apples to oranges as Secretary Powell used a secure gov't server for his official State emails), she's also hating on another black man (President Obama, referred to by the Clintons as "that man") for legitimately beating her in the 2008 election.

Her very biggest donors just happened to land cushy diplomatic jobs. One bird got the top spot at the FCC thanks to "that man" after he'd shoveled $3.5 million at the President's feet.

Hillary Clinton is simply the Ethan Couch of US politics. She brazenly breaks the law, gets innocent people killed in the process (such as in Libya, which set back women's rights by decades) and honestly thinks wealth, position and privilege should insulate her from any kind of comeuppance or even just scrutiny whatsoever. And, like Couch and his Robert Rodriguez-like exodus into Mexico, when the heat got to be too much, Hillary also ducked out of sight and went for over 260 days without a presser. Pneumonia? Bullshit. We should call her the Affluenza Candidate.
My final thoughts on this for now?

The silence of the Hillarybots on this new #DNCleak is deafening. They're probably all in a virtual bunker somewhere ladling out Koolaid.